Thank you for having ordered this document instead of posting yourquestion to a mailing list. This is a good start - now you will learn howto find the answer to your questions by yourself. There is no file withfrequently asked questions and answers, because nobody has had time toprepare one, and it would become obsolete pretty fast unless it wasregularly updated. There is, however, a process which allows you to findup-to-date answers to frequently asked questions: the database functionsof LISTSERV. Most of the questions about LISTSERV you might ever have toask have been answered already on the LISTSERV discussion list(LSTSRV-L), which held about 6,500 messages at the time this document waswritten. You can search this database on any of the following hosts:

Before you start shaking your head and wondering where on earth I gotsuch a silly idea for a FAQ file, let me give you an example. Let's sayyou want to find out the exact syntax of netwide unsubscription requests.Here are the results of an actual search:

That's right, one hundred and ninety five messages are related to yourquestion, and the first one dates back to 1988. That first messagecontains a description of the facility, complete with syntax and a samplejob file. It is now obsolete in some respects, but still mostlyapplicable, and it probably does answer your question. You will probablyobject that this is a rather generic question, and that yours is, quiteto the contrary, very specific indeed: you got an "Internal error number2013" while posting to a list, and want to know what to do about it.Fine, let's try it...

A search like that takes at most 5 minutes when you are familiar with thedatabase functions, and gives you a comprehensive answer if there is one.You will not have to thank 20 people individually for having taken thetime to answer you by private mail. You will not irritate the subscribersof the list, who want to talk about more interesting things than thesyntax of netwide deletions. You will not embarass yourself by havingasked a question that invariably comes up once a week, or one whoseanswer should have been "obvious" if it hadn't been so late of you hadn'thad a cold or... People often apologize for having asked such questions,which further adds to the traffic on the mailing list, but I have yet tosee someone apologizing to a computer for having wasted its time on adatabase search.

No matter how you look at it, you win. The only cost to you is time -both to learn how to use the database functions, and to perform theactual search if the network is slow or if you are not yet familiar withthe database system. But the more you try it, the more efficient you willbecome and the less you will be slowed down by network delays: you willsoon be able to find the information you want in 2-3 "batch" searches,which you can send and forget about until the answer comes back. Granted,you will not get the answer until the network has delivered the file, butthe same is true with any question posted to the list via mail - it's thesame destination, after all. A well-trained "searcher" with a coupleEXEC's/COM files/scripts to assist in sending requests via mail and goodconnectivity to one of the archive sites can easily obtain an answer fromthe computer in less time than a human being could type a new one, unlessof course the answer is very short (like "No, this cannot be done").

But there is much more to the database functions than a system to answerquestions about LISTSERV, which in itself might not be worth the learninginvestment. Answering questions about LISTSERV is but one of thecountless uses you can put your searching knowledge to. LSTSRV-L is butone mailing list out of the 3,000+ there are on BITNET - and it's up toyou to explore the others as well. A well-trained searcher can obtain theanswer to almost any question about any academic topic in some 15minutes, by tapping the archives of one of these mailing lists - find theright list with LIST GLOBAL or with the LISTS database, then find theanswer as usual. There are lists about the biology of bees and camels,about the best type of bacteria to use in brewing beer, about holography,early music, boats, all kinds of social and scientific subjects, and, ofcourse, about anything closely or remotely related to computers. All thiswealth of information is available through a SINGLE interface, so whatare you doing reading this when you could be learning about it now?

Bibliography:

- Send an INFO DATABASE to LISTSERV for a copy of the database manual. Do not worry too much about the date - there have been so little changes since the original version that the documentation did not need to be updated.

- Release notes (descriptions of the changes from one release of LISTSERV to the next one) are available from [email protected] as 'Vnnt RELNOTE' (for instance, V17B RELNOTES describes the changes introduced in 1.7b). You can also find this sort of information via the database, but it will be scattered across a number of separate messages over a rather long period of time; if you want to know "What's new?", these files and the archives of the LSTSRV-M list (also at SEARN) are the best place to look.

- You may want to subscribe to the LDBASE-L list and read the archives, if you have BITNET connectivity and your system runs VM or VMS.